


Children

by Momoka_Rose



Series: Erejean Week 2k18 [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Bullying, Childhood Friends, Death, Foster Care, Happy Ending, M/M, Trans Armin, blood mention, oh and erens and jeans parents, so i wont tag them, the others are there but only mentioned once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 01:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14274180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Momoka_Rose/pseuds/Momoka_Rose
Summary: Jean and Eren through the yearstw: mentions of deaths and blood. Not in explicit detail but it is there.





	Children

Eren was loud. He had always been that way. Stomping and yelling, chasing invisible monsters around the house in an attempt to defeat them. He didn’t have an inside voice, just different levels of shouting. He was passionate and hot headed. Always running off with a one track mind and bulldozing through every task. Like the time he decided he wanted to bake cookies for his mother who was sick in bed. His father had sprinted to the kitchen after hearing clanging and shouting. He found Eren in tears on the floor next to the open oven, flour all over the floor and walls, face, hair and clothes and lumpy cookie dough thrown all over the floor from a dropped oven tray. 

 

Jean became loud. He talked a lot as a child, speaking a hundred miles an hour and asking questions at the same speed. Sitting at home with his toys, letting his imagination control the stories. Dressing up and setting up the living room to reenact those stories for his mother, who would smile and clap every time. Until the bigger kids at school decided they didn’t like that.

 

His mother was the first to notice. The way he trudged through the door after school. The downcast eyes and the silence. The tiny shaking fist at his side as he opened the door in the morning on a school day. She tried to talk to him, after finding the toys and dress up clothes he loved so much in a plastic bag near the bin, but he remained tight lipped and withdrawn. 

 

“They aren’t cool,” he said eyes down. “They’re girly,” his little voice quivered. Despite her best efforts to convince him there was nothing wrong with what he liked, or how he was, whatever the big kids were saying had dug under his skin and hurt him too much to believe her.

 

Jean’s mum met Eren when she was called to the school one day. She met him in the principal's office, face in a pout, arms crossed and a scowl etched on his face. Jean sat next to him, sitting in the exact same manner. 

 

Apparently Jean had called Eren’s shirt ‘girly’ and Eren had said, ‘I like it and I’m a boy. So I think it’s boy-ey.’

 

“Boy-ey isn’t a word. It’s girly, so you’re a girl.”

 

“I’m a boy,”

 

“Yeah but you’re like a girl.”

 

“People say I’m like my mum, and she’s a girl, so I guess so.”

 

“Being girly isn’t good!”

 

“Why not? I like my mum, what’s wrong with being like her?”

 

“I don’t know! Girly just isn’t good! It’s stupid!”

 

“You’re stupid!”

 

“Am not!”

 

“Are too!”

 

“Am not!”

 

Both deny being the one to push the other first, but they were pulled apart by the teachers, shouting and flailing.

 

Jean’s mother couldn’t have been anymore grateful for that day, and to Eren. Until then, Jean had just been a lost child, desperate to fit in. Mimicking the bigger kids to feel less left out. After that day, after becoming tentative friends with Eren, Jean began to open up again.

 

After getting home the day of the argument, and after much gentle coaxing for his mother, Jean eventually opened up. He admitted he didn’t really think Eren was ‘girly’, or that it was that bad. But he had been treated bad for being ‘girly’, and he thought it must have been a bad thing since everyone seemed to agree. So when Eren argued things that he himself had thought but had been too scared to say to the big kids, he felt stupid and got angry.

 

He and Eren got along as much as they fought. They’d fight each time Jean would talk or act like the kids that had bullied him for so long. It saddened his mother to see the effect the kids had had on him, but she saw hope each day he spent with Eren.

 

They played together often. Eren would take Jean away for hikes around the nearby hills, Jean would lead Eren to his room and show off his toys that he had unpacked again, and they would dress up and put on plays together. Sometimes for Jean’s mother, sometimes for Eren’s parents, and sometimes with all of them gathered in the same living room.

 

This lasted till they were ten years old, when Eren’s mother was crossing the road and hit by a truck that ran a red light. She died instantly the doctors said, she would’ve felt no pain, is what Eren was told. He never saw his mother's body. It was a closed casket funeral. Something he didn’t understand at the time, but he understood enough from what the adults dressed in black were saying.

 

“Poor thing, they can’t show the body. Must have been a horrible accident.”

 

“Don’t want to imagine what it must have done to her to have it closed casket.”

 

Eren’s fists grew tighter, he grew louder and angrier. Angry at the world. Angry at his father who lost himself at the bottom of the whisky bottles in his study. Eren and Jean grew louder, their fights more physical. Eren would cry and shout without care. Jean would hide and cry where he couldn’t be seen. Locked in the bathroom, or the toilet. Both full of heartbreak and too young to understand how to cope.

 

Eren went into foster care, and all but disappeared from school. Jean was lost.

 

If it hadn’t have been for Marco, the bright boy with the big smile and warm heart, not even Jean could have predicted how he would be different. Marco’s friendship was gentle friendship.Marco was soft and sweet, and always had the nicest things to say. It took a while, but eventually Jean began to soften too. He smiled more, and had more good things to say. He said please, and thank you, and held the door open for a little old man carrying his groceries to the car.

 

Eren eventually came back to school, with a quiet girl by his side. Jean thought she had the prettiest hair, long and raven black. He learned her name was Mikasa, and she was at the same foster home as Eren. Eren called her his sister, and where ever Eren would go, she would too. 

 

He also had another friend. A tiny bob cut blonde who lived next door. The teachers all called him Amy, Eren and Mikasa called him Armin. They said he was a boy, but most people wouldn’t believe him because he didn’t look like a boy. At the time Jean didn’t quite understand, Armin did look kind of like a girl, but Marco also said Armin was a boy, and Jean trusted Marco.

 

Jean wanted to get to know Mikasa and Armin. But they were quiet. They were all quiet, even Eren. Eren wasn’t supposed to be quiet. Despite his mothers and Marco’s assurances, Jean was worried. He sat with Mikasa and Armin at lunch everyday. They barely played with anyone else, no matter how often Jean invited them. So Jean got angry. They fought. They fought and fought till eventually they stopped talking.

 

Then they weren’t kids anymore. They were teenagers. They were in high school and they had more friends now. Sasha, Connie, Historia, and Annie. And after a while some older kids too, like Reiner, Bertholdt and Ymir. 

 

They didn’t know why Eren and Jean fought so much. Not even they did half the time. It was just how they were. But they all learned not to be surprised when Eren would punch the boys who laughed at Jean’s painted nails and make up, or when Jean would start fights with anyone who made fun of Eren’s attitude or his lack of parents. They were a enigma of sorts.

 

At sixteen Marco died. He and Jean had gone to the local youth centre to watch a gig. The line up consisted of local bands, mostly kids from the local schools. Eren being one of the only drummers in town was often asked to play, which mean he played for three or four bands at any time. It kept his hands busy, gave his anger an outlet which meant less fights at school. That night Eren was playing for two bands.

 

It was a youth centre, there was no alcohol. It was supposed to be another night of stupid fun around the stage and pool tables. Marco went outside to get some air and never came back. The music from the bands had been too loud, no one heard anything. Jean went looking an hour later, wondering what was taking him so long that he missed Eren playing. He found him on the ground with pool of blood around his head.

 

It was supposed to be fun.

 

Eren came after hearing Jean shout Marco’s name. Eren called for help, he called the ambulance and the police. He kept everyone inside and held back Jean when the ambulance came to take Marco away.

 

Jean watched as they buried his long time friend, boyfriend of three months. Eren hated funerals. They never found the culprits. 

 

Eren was glued to Jean’s side after that. Jean tried to fight with him, but Eren knew it was only a distraction for him from the pain. He’d done the same thing. Jean gave up. They were inseparable after that. 

 

Jean didn’t open up again for the longest time, and Eren never made him. He waited. And waited.He sat with him in silence, shoulder to shoulder. Just letting him know he wasn’t alone. He dragged him out to parties and sat with him on the couch. Jean told him to go socialise, but he refused everytime. Moving on wasn't easy, but Eren was patient. 

 

At eighteen, Jean’s mother came home early to find Eren pressing Jean to the couch, lips locked and hands roaming under clothing. Jean pushed Eren off with a squeal, and his mother could only laugh as Eren landed with a loud thud and a curse. She couldn’t even say she was that surprised to catch them like that. She certainly had no issues with it. Eren was already like a second son to her. 

 

University came and went. Eren and Jean still fought loud, only instead of fist fights, it ended with kisses and grumbled apologies. They graduated and found work hand in hand. Next came the house, then the rings and wedding. Then the fostering and adoption papers. 

 

Jean’s mother came home to find Eren and Jean on the couch and smiled. Jean was on his back, Eren squeezed between him and the back of the couch, face pressed into his chest, drooling. Both fast asleep under their pile of children. The twins and Ruby.

 

Her children had grown up and now it was their turn to love, cherish and nurture their own. It was their turn to sit through the dress up plays. To comfort them through the tears and pain. And to watch over them as they grow and become adults themselves. And it was her job to spoil her grandchildren rotten.

**Author's Note:**

> Soooooooooooooooooooooooo this was supposed to be about children, and then I got carried away and I don't have time to come up with something else, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway!!
> 
> Not proofread, written in whatever breaks I had at work. Will probably edit late, but for now forgive me for mistakes please!
> 
> Thanks for reading!!
> 
> (I know mythology was next, but I want to draw that one so I got this one done in the meantime!)


End file.
